The journey back to the mountain pass of Deadwind was considerably longer than I would have liked. Holding my prize above my head and treading water to keep the unconscious whelp from drowning had slowed me to a snails pace.
It took the better part of a full day to return to my Harvest Golems, which seemed to have gone undiscovered in my time away.
It was the dark of night by the time we managed to head into deadwind pass, and journey our way back to the equally dreary land of Duskwood.
We managed to cross to Duskwood relatively easily, our progress only having been halted once by three ogres looking for an easy meal.
The smoking remains of their bodies would see their friends fed for some time.
I would have raised them for the added protection, but I had gone a little overboard in my eagerness to leave.
It would have taken a lot of time and stitching to put them back together.
When we finally arrived in Duskwood I could already seen the beginning of the changes I had started to put in place.
Harvest golems gathered the shredded corpses of worgen and undead alike into large piles along the road side, easily ready to be burned.
Also along the road where several piles of wood from cleared trees, though as of yet I hadn't seen the fields that they had started on to gather the lumber.
In a couple of days I would be sending more workers and Golems out to transport the wood to Westfall, and to burn the bodies.
I did manage to see a few of my golems at work on the primary purpose of their stay in the province.
I saw several golems working together to tear a particularly large and dangerous looking abomination apart in a field of dead bodies.
Regrettably there were several disabled Harvest Golems around the battlefield. In a couple months of work like this the ones I brought in would have to be reinforced, and replaced by models that hadnt sustained damage.
Given enough time though, I'll see this place turned into nothing more than farmland, even if I never find the scythe.
The green whelp moved little in the forced slumber I had placed on it, but I made certain to inspect him every time I stopped to rest along the abandoned buildings near the road.
He was thin, and sickly, but alive. I could feel the magic inside him, something nearing that of the apprentices who had studied bloodmagic.
More than I'd expect from a creature less than a year old, but dragons where at the top of this worlds food chain for a reason. A full grown dragon was a threat to even some of the major players in this world.
An adult dragon could feasibly match a demon general, or most of the upper scourge leadership in single combat. It was close in those situations, and neither demons nor undead would willingly enter combat alone, but it hass happened in the past.
In a couple years it'll be a dragon that nearly ends the world, even if its the most powerful living one.
That kind of power was something I needed. I had been forcing experts and adepts in several different fields of magic to work together and attempt to use the combination for my own strength.
They were giving me an education on useful spells, how the different magics worked together, and how I could use it myself.
Every spell I now used in combat was something I knew exactly how to manipulate in nearly every form of magic I was trying to learn. I had grown at a monstrous rate for the year I had been here, taking advantage of a world in peril.
It would never be enough if I played this fairly. I knew what experts in the field could do. Antheol could kill me in an instant if he was ever freed, Tim could arguably do the same with some preparation.
Even the apprentice necromancers where a threat if they came at the right moment.
Which was where the rituals I was putting together would be my saviour.
I was working with experts in several fields of magic that had never been crossed before.
They where all modifying rituals primarily based in necromancy, Voodoo and now blood magic all designed to increase my strength.
My servants where in the process of figuring out how to cast no less than a dozen custom made rituals safely. That was my strength, that was the factor that would tilt things in my favor.
Some would take years to have the resources or circumstance to complete, others would need power at a level I simply couldn't put together easily, and still more where matters of scale.
In a decade I could master perhaps a single field of magic, but why bother when those who had grown so close to mastering them worked for me already?
I was not looking to be someone who people approached with caution, I was not looking to be someone the major players chose not to fight alone for their own safety.
I was looking to break the scale people used to measure strength. I would not be a king. I would not be a god.
I would be worse.
I would be something else entirely. I pulled my pack away, looking at it as I descended into the Deadmines once again, nearly a week after I had left.
I smiled as the whelp coughed in its slumber, it was something weak, something no-one expected anything of.
Just like me.
"Of all the evil I've done, of all the magic I've put together, you will be my masterpiece."